Solid evidence that our recommendations to high-risk Apple users makes sense... 👇

Citizen Lab senior researcher Bill Marczak served as a key witness in a UK ruling that ordered Saudi Arabia to pay £3M to Ghanem al-Masarir, a London-based dissident who was targeted with #Pegasus spyware. Read the ruling: caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ewhc/kb/2026...

NEW from @suzannesmalley.bsky.social NSO Group tried to hijack an international diplomatic process on spyware (called "Pall Mall") to launder their sullied reputation Fortunately, the French 🇫🇷 and UK 🇬🇧 govts (who steer Pall Mall) weren't having any of it therecord.media/spyware-make...

404 Media is publishing a version of the user guide for the Palantir-made tool called ELITE, which lets ICE bring up dossiers on individual people and provides a “confidence score” of their address. www.404media.co/here-is-the-...

The US 🇺🇸 is on a massive downhill trajectory into some pretty dark territory, as many of us have been warning for years, and it's now going to manifest in full-on ethnic cleansing as my Munk School @timothysnyder.bsky.social warns 👇

Naked unvarnished corruption

I wrote about how to use Signal nicknames so that you don't have to be confused about who everyone is in all of your Signal groups micahflee.com/are-your-sig...

Having just returned from London 🇬🇧, I can recommend a few Lamborghinis and Ferraris to seize www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

ICE 🇺🇸 has been on a surveillance shopping spree www.washingtonpost.com/technology/i...

Good news for high risk users: WhatsApp has rolled out their own version of "lockdown mode" www.reuters.com/business/med...

So much for mitigating transnational repression in the United States 🇺🇸 They're shipping people off to be disappeared

Huge news out of the UK 🇬🇧 www.reuters.com/world/uk/sau...

Wrong decision @hootsuite.com You're shameful. www.theglobeandmail.com/business/art...

Toronto profs @rondeibert.bsky.social and Jason Stanley argue Mark Carney should’ve told Davos what really makes Canada great — for @thestar.com: www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

PM Carney 🇨🇦gave a courageous speech with a lot of real-talk about the "rupture" in the international order. But he left something out: the values that define us as a country & distinguish us from the fascist train wreck in the US 🇺🇸 My oped w Jason Stanley www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

NEW 🚨 @citizenlab.ca report: Cellebrite forensic data extraction tool used against Jordanian civil society citizenlab.ca/research/fro...

Trump's 🇺🇸 paramilitary shock troops sowing violence on the streets of America -- no due process, no restraints, excessive force, no warrants.

On its one-year anniversary, @rondeibert.bsky.social Chasing Shadows is now out in paperback with a new afterword + endorsement by @margaretatwood.bsky.social Order a copy here: chasingshadowsbook.ca

The Canadian 🇨🇦 govt, and its Minister of AI and Innovation, is rushing headlong into full blown AI. All gas, no brakes, no real consultation So we're launching the People’s Consultation on AI You can find out more here 👇: www.peoplesaiconsultation.ca/news-updates/

This self-inflicted destruction will have a generational impact and make us all worse off.

This is a stunning illustration of the national auto-lobotomy going on in the United States 🇺🇸 www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

Citizen Lab sr. researcher @fittarelli.com speaks with the @tbij.bsky.social about ‘wikilaundering’ by bad actors intending to spread #disinformation. Read the article: www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...

Burning Data: the ecological shadow cast by AI 👇 nicely summarized by @bennjordan.bsky.social with Musk's GrokAI data center in Memphis.

So thrilled to see the paperback edition of Chasing Shadows (chasingshadowsbook.ca) - including a lovely endorsement by the great @margaretatwood.bsky.social (thank you Margaret!) Includes a new afterword which picks up where I left off, focusing on the techno-fascist descent in the US🇺🇸

Palantir's ELITE equips ICE stormtroopers with real-time maps and complete dossiers (home address, identifiers, etc) on targets to snatch them off the street. www.404media.co/elite-the-pa...

A London UK 🇬🇧 private contractor rewrites Wikipedia entries for billionaire oligarchs and corrupt governments (w/ comments from @citizenlab.ca's @fittarelli.com ) www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...

Ther have been so many norms violated routinely over the last year it may be possible to overlook just what a huge threshold has been crossed in the USA 🇺🇸 with the violent occupation of Minnesota by Trump's Praetorian fascist stormtroopers

If you want to know about the future of AI, take a look at the kaleidoscope of disinfo and psychological operations underway in Iran 🇮🇷 This excellent piece by @mahsaalimardani.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com is a great start www.theatlantic.com/internationa...

Colombia's 🇨🇴 Justice Minister Andres Idarraga claims his phone was hacked with Pegasus by his own govt's security agencies www.straitstimes.com/world/second...

GrokAI (yes that one) is going to be unleashed on US DoD networks. Hegseth said military AI systems will operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications" and that the Pentagon's “AI will not be woke.” What could go wrong? federalnewsnetwork.com/artificial-i...

Authoritarian laundering

It does not, as the weights are pre-computed during training. You are just downloading the same (ish) model to run locally. The problems with DeepSeek are in the weights, not in the system prompting.

I love the idea of a privacy-oriented LLM, but the use of China's DeepSeek as the underlying engine is an issue

X has become the Everything App that Elon always wanted, if “everything” means all the tools you need to fuck up someone’s life, in one place. This is the culmination of years and years of rampant abuse on the platform. www.404media.co/grok-ai-sexu...

This after crushing CISA, DOGEing all federal tech capacity, ending the Secure by Design pledge, and cancelling grant funding for state and local cybersecurity We have invented a special new kind of danger for ourselves

Twitter‘s solution to making CSAM for free is to make CSAM for profit.

The Trump regime's withdrawal from international "cyber" orgs will weaken cybersecurity coordination and help spread authoritarianism. [precisely what they probably want to happen] My comments to @timstarks.bsky.social @cyberscoop.bsky.social cyberscoop.com/trump-pulls-...

Have you noticed 🇺🇸 ICE vehicles screeching to a halt and snatching people off the street? Ever wonder how they knew about that person's location? Here's how 👇 www.404media.co/inside-ices-...

The United States 🇺🇸 is dismantling the liberal international order it helped create. www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

What's it going to take to get Americans out in the streets by the millions & shut everything down in a general strike? Hasn't there been enough demagoguery? The President's Praetorian guard hasn't murdered enough innocent people yet? Too few violations of international law?

100% fascist bullshit

1/ Russian disinfo sponsors can’t believe their luck at the chaos spurred by their American counterparts. Not only politicians, but their tech enablers too, of course. Meet “Budjetti”. “She” is on X, of course. Openly antisemitic, racist, anti-Ukraine. And completely unchallenged.

"If states fail to act together to preserve the prohibition on the use of force — the bedrock of the postwar legal order — the toll will be registered in many more lives lost in conflicts that no longer have any guardrails to stop them." @oonahathaway.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/o...

In the immediate aftermath of the US attack on Venezuela, the rump govt and its security apparatus has quickly turned to domestic repression. Journalists arrested, phones seized and inspected. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...

With recent attention on GrokAI's publication of illegal CSAM and other harmful content, it's a good time to re-up this piece I wrote for @theglobeandmail.com a couple of months ago on Canada's 🇨🇦 Minister of AI. www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/arti...

Grok AI is spewing highly abusive, Illegal content on demand Such important investigative journalism by @ajvicens.bsky.social & @raphae.li

Canada 🇨🇦 has courted billions from autocratic regimes and has a Minister of AI who enthusiastically cheerleads tech that produces CSAM, counsels teens on how to commit suicide, and services up harmful health advice to cancer patients www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

The tide is slowly changing in the US 🇺🇸 around mercenary spyware restrictions Which would be bad news for human rights, but (and here's the irony) bad news for US 🇺🇸 national security too. Huge counterintelligence risks.... (which is of little concern to kleptocrats)

Treasury removes sanctions for three executives tied to spyware maker Intellexa therecord.media/treasury-san...

Received a notification from Apple, Google or WhatsApp that you've been targeted or hacked with government spyware? Take it seriously! Here's a very useful guide from @lorenzofb.bsky.social @techcrunch.com about what steps you should take next 👇